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ST. LOUIS — Robert Cole helped a friend learn about his diabetes. Cole, of Ferguson, Mo.,
searched online, printed out some articles from his computer and passed along the information.

About six weeks later, Cole began receiving advertisements in the mail and online for diabetes
testing supplies.

He was alarmed by the connection.

Cole, 65, who has no history of the disease, launched into a personal investigation several
years ago about who owns his identity and personal information and began evangelizing to his family
and friends about the way individual data is mined and may be used.

He’s not alone in worrying about how his digital moves are being tracked. New efforts are under
way to help individuals regain some control of how their information is collected and shared. And
new research suggests that people are beginning to take steps to protect their privacy online and
on cellphones.

Cole called the firm that mailed him brochures to find out how it obtained his name and address,
but he was unable to get an answer.

Eventually, he filed a complaint with the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego and tried to
contact the American Civil Liberties Union to find out who had the right to access and sell
information about him.

“Am I in somebody’s database as a diabetic? Because I’m not. I don’t even know how to correct
that,” he said. What if he applies for life insurance, he asked, and is rejected based on a faulty
profile? Could he be charged higher premiums or be denied credit because of what he types in his
emails or in Google searches?

Automated bots sweep the Web for consumer information, and websites use cookies and browser
fingerprinting to follow users across the Web, while third-party data-brokers sell users’ projected
online behaviors in real time.

Laura McCarthy Jarman, 30, of St. Louis, said she noticed when she was planning her wedding in
the spring that most of the ads she saw online were related to weddings. “It was just so bizarre,”
she said. “You feel like your computer is reading your mind.”

She ended up installing an ad blocker, which struck her as ironic, given her own job in public
relations and marketing.

It made the time she spent online much more enjoyable, she said. While she was motivated by both
convenience and privacy concerns, she said, she can appreciate why collecting the information is
important to help businesses and can be useful for some consumers.

Cole has a more philosophical objection.

“I have an issue with how someone can sell my name without my acknowledgement or agreement,”
Cole said. If someone is profiting from selling personal information about his behavior online, he
wants a cut of it.

George Blake, a retired newspaper editor in Atlanta, is hoping to attract millions of consumers
who share Cole’s logic. Last month, he launched two privacy-related websites based on what he
believes is a pent-up public demand for taking back control of personal data.

One of his sites, Money For My Data, lets individuals sign up to allow companies to sell
collected data and take periodic surveys about interests and future purchases. Individuals can
decide which pieces of their consumer profile they want shared with companies interested in
targeting them for ads, Blake said.

His company will package and sell the data or work with data accumulators on sales the users
have permitted. His goal is to have individuals get a percentage of the profit from the sale when
their name is included on such a list.

“Data is the new world currency,” he said. “People need to claim ownership of data in critical
mass.” Blake believes that attaching a monetary value to an individual’s personal data will help
bolster legal arguments protecting consumer privacy rights.

He’s also working on a registry to allow users to opt out of being tracked online, although an
international body, the World Wide Web Consortium, also has been working on Do Not Track standards
for nearly a year.

The consortium’s proposed Do Not Track option will let users choose in their browser preferences
a setting that indicates that they do not want websites and ad networks to track their browsing
behavior. What businesses will need to do to comply with these standards is still being
negotiated.

Microsoft said recently that Internet Explorer 10 will include the anti-tracking setting as a
default, but the Apache Web server, which powers 60 percent of websites worldwide, declared that it
would ignore the Do Not Track request from all IE-10 browsers because it was set as a default and
not expressly chosen by a person.

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a nonprofit advocacy organization, has received 526 consumer
complaints since the start of the year. The most common complaint topics relate to medical privacy;
workplace issues, such as employment background checks and workplace surveillance; online data
brokers and the availability of public records online; data sharing practices by small businesses;
and unwanted phone calls that are difficult to stop, according to spokeswoman Amber Yoo. Most of
the complaints have a technology element, she added.

Media coverage of high-profile, privacy-related news this year may also be raising awareness and
concern about privacy issues, she said.

The White House issued its Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court limited police use
of a GPS tracking device to track suspects and the Federal Trade Commission fined Google $22
million for violating the terms of Safari’s privacy protections.

Aleecia McDonald, a privacy researcher and fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at
Stanford Law School, says her work on users’ understanding of digital behavior and privacy reveals
a significant knowledge gap.